Inspiration for stories can come to you as nearby as the local shopping centre, or on travels to the other side of the world. Going to Summertime was inspired close to home. The hairdressing salon at the centre of it is, physically at least, inspired by the salon I’ve gone to for years, which is Read More …
Okay, I absolutely loved The God of the Woods! Loved the characters and the setting, always been a sucker for summer camp mysteries. I was definitely surprised at the end and enjoyed discovering new layers and secrets. A tiny part of me thought there wasn’t enough foreshadowing but fortunately it wasn’t one of those that Read More …
It’s intriguing, almost eerie, where stories sometimes come from. Newer stories can grow from fragments or earlier work—nothing is waste. I had finished writing a novella that held an archaeological dig. Just then, I received an invitation to an anthology on the nature of beasts, tales of fantastic fiends surrounding anthropologists, and exposure to the Read More …
by Seb Doubinsky I began the “City-States Cycle” 30 years ago, not knowing it would become a cycle. They were just three separate novellas (first published as such in… Denmark!) that later became “The Babylonian Trilogy”, and from there, I kept on writing about the same universe. As a child of Punk (I went to Read More …
I picked up The Island of Last Things because the idea of the last zoo on Earth sounded cool, but I ended up loving it for a variety of reasons. The characters and their love of animals felt real, the world was sad without being over the top, as in, I could totally see this Read More …
Finding Joy by Anika Toro — a lil’ review ✨ I loved this book. Let’s start with that cover?? bright yellow, paper-cut trees and clouds, the word “joy” scattered everywhere like it escaped from the page — i was sold before i even read the description. so here’s the concept and it’s SO cool: Anika Read More …
Elita is one of those books that starts out feeling like a quiet little mystery and then suddenly you’re fully obsessed. The book takes place in 1951 in the Pacific Northwest, and follows two women—well, a woman and a girl—who’ve both been abandoned in completely different ways. The story kicks off when two prison guards Read More …
by Angela Yuriko Smith My experience with anOther Nemesis was shaped by the privilege of working alongside poets I admire and respect. anOther Nemesis is not a single voice pushing back against erasure, but a chorus. Each of us engages resistance differently: through linguistic rupture, through the body, through ancestry, through myth reimagined and unmade. Read More …
I just finished “Little Heaven” by Nick Cutter, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Talk about a twisted journey into the the deep, dark heart of the wilderness (literally)! The story revolves around a group of three misfit mercenaries who are hired to help a woman check on the welfare of her nephew at a remote religious Read More …
Kathe Koja’s Dark Matter is the third book in her Dark Factory series and like the first two, reading it feels like stepping into a dream you’re not sure you agreed to have, but suddenly you’re wide awake and completely hooked. This whole series pushes the boundary between what’s real and what’s manufactured with the Read More …